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Planning Questions

Hello Fellow Knotters! Some questions for you... Who are you paying for, if anyone, to come to the wedding? When are you arriving for your wedding, are you staying in a house? If so, are you offering rooms to people in your house? For those closer to their wedding date, what is your budget?

Re: Planning Questions

We are not necessarily paying for anyone's travel arrangements or accommodations except my 91 year old grandmother. We chose to get married on Friday 9/16 and we are checking in on 9/11-9/18 which is a Sun to Sun rental. We didnt want to get married on a Sat and then turn around and check out on Sunday so we backed it up to a Friday so that we still have Sat to relax and recover and then check out on Sunday. This is a very popular option for a lot of brides. My SIL got married in obx 3 years ago and did it this way and we were very grateful that we had the next day to relax.

My family rented a home for our immediate family only and each person has paid their own share of it. This is controversial to some b/c they say that if you are hosting a wedding, then we should be paying for the rooms however; we vacation every summer in nags head and each person pays their own way then so we felt it should be no different just b/c of the wedding and our family was completely ok with this. Its what is acceptable for our group so it worked for us.

Hello there!We are paying for rooms only for my wedding planner & hairdresser (who are also old girlfriends of mine). We decided to do this instead of payment, as a thank you. Also, my FI's parents are renting a 10 bdrm house and hosting as many of their attending friends & family as possible free of charge. This was their idea and seems to work for their family. Everyone else is on their own!

As PP mentioned above, the days you have your rental home can determine the date of your wedding. We are having our's on a Sunday, to accomodate those who will be renting a Sat-Sat rental. We personally are renting our own honeymoon cottage on the beach but most our guests are staying at the Sea Ranch, which is attached to our venue, The Pearl.

Budget...well, it started at $7,500 but has been growing a bit. Thankfully, the split for us ends up meaning that we are splitting costs 3 ways between us, my parents and FI's parents.

We were thankfully able to land a great house with a Thursday to Thursday reservation. Our wedding will be Saturday, October 8th so we will have plenty of time before and after.

The house we are renting, which will also be the reception location (fantastic backyard and amazing beach access) has 9 rooms. So in order to be fair to everyone coming into town for the wedding, we are asking for $50 a room per night. That way no one is getting a room for free...but those choosing to stay where all the action and craziness is, will get a discount.

We're trying to stay within a budget of $10,000 which I'm learning is a lot harder than what it sounds!

I am similar to OBX... I am staying Sunday to Sunday and our wedding is on Friday. The event home which we are using for our ceremony/reception sleeps 28 people so we are reserving it for immediate family, but everyone is paying their own way except for my grandparents.

My FI's parents felt bad about everyone having to pay to come to the wedding, so I had prereserved a home down the street and they ended up keeping that for my FMIL's family (she has a huge family). They are renting out the rooms for $500 a piece to the family and covering the rest of it themselves. Turns out to be a great price for the families that can fit into one room and only pay $500 for a beachfront vacation for a week, but we felt pretty bad having my FI's family pay for everything. Apparently the money they are using to cover it was going to be part of our wedding present, but at least now more people can make it!

Our total budget (excluding dress, rings, etc) is going to come in right around $21k. Included in that price is $3k for my wedding planner and the $2.5k event home fee, so those big pieces might not be applicable to you.

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_north-carolina-outer-banks_planning-questions?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local Wedding BoardsForum:598Discussion:5b1c5afe-58f5-4171-9e72-c78deeac6981Post:b832300c-4086-4b0d-830a-51a4db37d6eb">Planning Questions</a>:
[QUOTE]Hello Fellow Knotters! Some questions for you... Who are you paying for, if anyone, to come to the wedding? When are you arriving for your wedding, are you staying in a house? If so, are you offering rooms to people in your house? For those closer to their wedding date, what is your budget? Thanks for all your help!
Posted by ksj10032782[/QUOTE]

We aren't paying for anyone, but we aren't having a bridal party.

We're getting married on the 24th (a Friday), but we're staying Sunday the 19th thru Sunday the 3rd. Most of our guests are coming in the Wednesday before and leaving the Sunday after.

We rented a house on the sound through sunrealty. It's three bedrooms, but we're keeping it to ourselves. =) We're also taking our two small dogs with us.

Our overall budget is around $15,000 (not including rings), but that's estimating high oin food/drink and including our two-week stay.

Thank you for everyone getting back to me! What was your first step? We're about 8 hours away, and are trying to do as much research as we can online, but obviously want to see the place before booking anything!

For the house, I would compile a list of homes that you like and organize them by either your top choices or by address, since you dont want to be driving up and down the same roads all day long. I would do the homes in the morning b/c checkout time is 10am and check-in time is 4:oopm but most mgmt companies will let you check-in early as long as the home is ready. Feel free to drive up and park and get out and walk around. No one is going to bother you and if you happen to run into someone, just say you wanted to take a sneak peek at the house for your upcoming wedding. OBX'ers are cool and laid back so they don't mind. You can also call the mgmt company and ask if they will let you borrow the keys to go inside the home.....and here is a tip, if they tell you that someone is checking in that day then ask if you can get the keys at 12pm or a designated time before che-ck-in OR just go by there anyways b/c more than likele, you will see the cleaners there and they dont care if you come in either.

For wedding stuff, it was the venue venue venue. That is a hot item in the Outer Banks and the good ones go quickly so I would make it a point to check them out. Catering you cant really meet with since they will be doing weddings BUT you can go by a few of your top places for a quick lunch or dinner just to sample their menu and see if it's your style of food.

Photography, DJ and Officiant call all be done online and most will be busy doing weddings on the weekends anyways.

I agree with OBX2011 completely! That is the route we took... We had one extended weekend in November to get all the in-person planning done and the rest I've done online. I had three things I told myself I had to get done that weekend: Choose the reception venue, the caterer and the cake. I made appointments with those three first and fit in visiting rental houses along the OBX in between.

For the house we made a list online and went to the rental companies to visit ones we were debating. Resort, Village and Hatteras realty were all super cool about this and gave us keys to almost all the properties we wanted to see. Ironically, the rental homes we actually chose were not ones we visited... but when we examined our budget after we chose our reception venue we found two that made sense in terms of location and price. Plus, we had driven around the area enough to know the section we wanted. (We're doing the Sun-Sun thing w/a Friday wedding too.. and providing accommodations for everyone in the wedding party).

Truth be told, I probably wasted way too much time on the rental house thing... I went as far as making personal maps using bing.com and the birds-eye view with clickable links to the rental house website.

Get the venue nailed down first and other things will start to fall into place. Otherwise you can spend an unearthly amount of time considering all the possibilities from Corolla down to Hatteras.

Thanks OBX.. we're not really sure where to start.. I've looked at a couple of places, but we were hoping for a Sept. 2012 wedding, but can't get an answer from my mom on how much she's willing to pay (without going into all the details). We can't make it down to OBX until summer, I'm not sure we want to go then anyway, we're worried all the good places for Sept. 2012 will be booked if we wait until fall to head down.. our thought is a wedding on the beach, and a reception elsewhere, but I'm not finding too many venues on the beach, aside from hotels, that aren't event homes. We're at a loss right now...

Hey Kelly, I am in the same boat as you are! Being up in RI, I am about a 12 hour drive. We are still unclear on our full buget an want to plan something for Summer 2012 timeframe. I have been looking online and reading all the postings on the knot and it is helping me with some direction for sure. I am afraid I can't offer too much advice myself being in the same position, but I am sure you will figure it out and have a fantastic wedding! I am hoping to plan a trip down in a few weeks so I will post more when I have a better handle on everything. Good luck!

wxkristin--I'm right there with you about stalking out houses. I was all about Google's street view and different angles so I could really see what the house looked like. Those photographers can do some amazing things!

ksj--the only places that are OF off the top of my head are: The Pier House at Hilton Garden Inn, The Pearl Restaurant, The Village Beach Club (which doesn't allow ANY glass btw) and Jennette's Pier which the grand opening is May 2011.

We booked ALL of our vendors for our June 2011 in May 2010 by spending 5 days in the OBX for a planning vacation. We started with our venue (The Pearl) because we wanted to get married on the beach but have a reception indoors. The Pearl eliminated a lot of steps for us because it's our venue, dinner, drinks, and cake all in one.

Then we stalked rental houses for us. We mapped them out online and then drove around to see them in person. We didn't worry about going inside any of them.

After that we met with our officiant, 2 florists and 4 photographers over the next few days. We mailed contracts the following week and have been doing everything else online and by phone.

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_north-carolina-outer-banks_planning-questions?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local Wedding BoardsForum:598Discussion:5b1c5afe-58f5-4171-9e72-c78deeac6981Post:0e31ae90-ac44-408e-bb75-f3dd8dd3978d">Re: Planning Questions</a>:
[QUOTE]Teach, I have had the hardest time contacting the people at The Pearl, they are not responding to my inquires. Do you have a contact I could maybe reach out to? I am trying to plan my "planning" trip! BTW- This is the most helpful forum, I am addicted! Thanks!
Posted by jkramas[/QUOTE]

My last email was from our second part of the deposit in January from Trish's email <a href="mailto:thepearlobx%20at%20embarqmail%20dot%20com">thepearlobx AT embarqmail DOT com</a>. Phone number <font face="Arial" size="2">252-480-3463. It's owned my a husband/wife team so she mangages and he's the chef. If you can't get anything by email, I'd call and see about doing things that way.
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I first used the form on their website and then she sent me an email saying it sounded like a good fit. I followed up with a phone call a few days later. After that we did some emailing and some phone calls to get our planning trip figured out and I mailed the deposit without actually seeing the place in order to hold our date.

We didn't actually accomplish anything during the planning trip, but it was great to see the place in person. I had expected to sample some of the food, make a tentative menu, timeline, seating arrangement, etc. since we wouldn't be back down until the week of the wedding and that's how my venue visits at other places had gone. Trish said their menus change so much we couldn't really set any food yet, but we went back and ate dinner there that night so we could taste the food and they kindly let us try a few extras and sample some wine too. I have no doubts the food will be awesome.

I think you'll be fine waiting until this fall to scope out spots for a Sept 2012 wedding. Some people are on top of the schedule... I am not one of them. We got engaged last July, thought we would do the wedding locally (Oklahoma), couldn't find anywhere we liked/agreed on and decided around October to do it closer to my parents (NC).

We made our planning trip to the OBX in mid-November planning for a late June to mid-July wedding (as a meteorologist I just knew I would be tempting fate to plan for August or Sept). We used Thanksgiving to run our plans by the family and put our first deposits down in early December (about 6-7 mo away).

The only problem waiting until this fall is you'll need to be open to a few different dates (including a Friday instead of Saturday) as someone might have already grabbed your first choice. We visited the whalehead club, 108 Budleigh, the Pamilico Inn and various event houses and all had at least one of the dates we were considering open.

Oh, in terms of beach ceremony locations you can use any of the public access areas and national park land... However, they have restrictions on chairs/set-up and you can't rope off areas to prevent people from walking through.

When we visited 108 Budleigh, Allison suggested using the Coquina beach access just south of Nags Head -- it's a favorite spot by the locals with a wide beach, plenty of parking and a bath house. I think I remember there being a $150 permit from the NPS to have the ceremony... Another area you can use is the beach on the sound at Jockey's Ridge state park, I remember the park ranger saying there was an application process for this and they only approved 2-3 per year and limited it to certain seasons.

We had decided to use the area in front of our rental home, Joe Lamb charged us a $200 'event fee' to allow people access to the beach and use the bathrooms as necessary... I wasn't thrilled about the fee, but in the overall scheme it wasn't a big deal: http://www.joelambjr.com/rental/house.html?ID=165

(now we're using the house for the rehearsal dinner and the chapel at St. Andrew's Episcopal for the ceremony)

I too did a lot of my pre-planning by using the Outer Banks Wedding Association website to look at vendors and venues. I got engaged in June of 2010 knowing we would not get married until the Fall of 2011. I attended the 2011 wedding expo in January and nailed down my venue that weekend. After that, I have not run into anyone that has not had my date available (October 9, 2011--which is a Sunday of a holiday weekend). In fact, when I was looking, all of my top venues still had Labor Day weekend and Columbus Day weekend available which were my top choices at the time. I think you are absolutely fine waiting until the Fall and possibly even until January for the Expo which I found completely invaluable. You definitely need to do your homework before heading to the Expo so you know where to focus because there is so much to do in one weekend. It is highly likely that the May and June dates book up more than a year in advance, but I did not experience that problem.

I guess I should add that I looked at the Saltaire House, the Kitty Hawk Pier House, the Currituck Club, and 108 Budleigh and they all had one of my dates available. I ultimately decided on 108 Budleigh.